Can Software Improve GIs' Health?

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Can Software Improve GIs' Health?

A Defense Department program designed to improve the quality of health care for active-duty military personnel has come under fire before it's had a chance to get off the ground.

Critics charge that the strategy, dubbed Force Health Protection, does little or nothing to change a medical treatment system that a 1997 congressional report described as "irreparably flawed" by "institutional inertia (and) arrogant incuriosity." Detractors say the program emphasizes record keeping at the expense of meaningful reform.

Pentagon officials, meanwhile, insist they're simply trying to avoid some of the health care-related glitches that occurred during the Gulf War.

A key element of the program requires periodic individual "medical assessments" before, during and after troops are sent to combat areas. Staff doctors will evaluate these medical report cards and forward them to a newly created deployment health center to be entered in a database.

Once on the system's servers, knowledge management software will review, collate and integrate the information with data about specific diseases, as well as the biological and chemical warfare agents most likely to be encountered in a particular theater of operations.

The program gives GIs "an opportunity to bring up any medical conditions that occurred to them in the last several months or in the period since their last physical examination," said Michael Kilpatrick, deputy director of the Pentagon's Deployment Health Support Directorate. "It's a quick check to make sure they are ready to go."

He said the idea is also to plug military health-service black holes that devoured tens of thousands of individual medical records during the Gulf War.

"We've learned a great deal from deployments over the past 12 years since the Gulf War, and we intend to use those lessons to benefit those who serve today," Kilpatrick said. "That's what this program is all about."

But critics such as University of Illinois professor of law and biological warfare expert Francis Boyle are more concerned with what the program isn't about.

"It appears we're going to do the exact same things (we did in the Gulf War) all over again," Boyle said. "The same anthrax and smallpox shots, the same bromide tablets and even more depleted uranium weapons."

Many health experts believe that vaccines, anti-biological-warfare drugs and radioactive weapons are responsible for the wide array of debilitating and sometimes fatal maladies known as Gulf War syndrome.

Meryl Nass, an internist who specializes in epidemiology and biological warfare, has questions about the nature of the health-assessment forms and whether they will be used in lieu of a proper medical exam for military personnel returning from service in harm's way.

Nass said that she and two other Gulf War activists met with Kilpatrick recently and requested more specifics on the program. But so far, they have received no additional information, she said.

"From what I know, they are giving out questionnaires to the troops before deploying and only doing examinations on those who report having medical problems," Nass said. "One issue is whether they will evaluate all returning troops or give them a questionnaire again, and secondly, how good the questionnaires are at teasing out symptoms such as those of (Gulf War syndrome)."

Other critics, such as retired Army Maj. Glenn MacDonald, who is a Vietnam and Gulf War veteran and serves as editor-in-chief of MilitaryCorruption.com, contend that the new program will do nothing to deter the deliberate deletion or falsification of health records by the Pentagon.

The missing records from the Gulf War, MacDonald contends, were "lost" on purpose rather than through incompetence or poor system design.

"What the military was doing was using experimental drugs on service members, and if the record of the 'shots' is missing, they later cannot go to the VA and seek medical care," MacDonald said. "It is a horrific way to treat our men and women in uniform."